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TAP TIMES -18- MARCH 2022

turned AT&T’s untouchable, potentate-like
Stocks (from 17) position as the industry leader on July 28,

1974.
Yahoo! Finance says Broadcom faces stiff
competition from Analog Devices, Cisco, Fat and happy
Cree, Finisar, GlobalFoundries, Intel, Lu- A decade ago, many observers felt Intel,
mentum, MACOM, Marvell, Mediatek, NXP the iconic CPU maker founded by Drs.
Semiconductors, Qorvo, Qualcomm, ON Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore had be-
Semiconductor, Skyworks, Toshiba and come fat and happy and had lost its verve
Texas Instruments in the semiconductor to innovate that propelled the company to
solutions market. its leadership position.

Still the one Many industry pundits blamed Robert
Although competitors abound, some of the Swan, who had been Intel’s chief bean
largest institutional buyers including Ci- counter for several years. Then, after
tibank and Goldman Sachs, say this tele- Intel said it was scouring the universe for
5
com giant is a buy. a new CEO, Swan was thrust into the top
spot.
Intel Corp. (INTC)
While he was considered competent, his
I was a young reporter lack of an engineering background, said
many decades ago in the observers, was holding the company back,
San Francisco bureau of and the old excitement was missing.
the sadly now-defunct
“Bible of the Electron- Returning veteran
ics Industry” Electronic Enter returning veteran Patrick Gelsinger,
News. The editor, Jim Ly- 60, who was named Intel CEO on February
don, often told his largely 15, 2021.
inexperienced charges:
Everything in the electronics industry This was a homecoming for Gelsinger. He
flows from AT&T.” had worked at Intel in quality control when
he was just 18 in 1979.

He graduated summa cum laude from
Santa Clara University, a few miles from
Intel’s headquarters, and received a Mas-
ter’s in engineering from Stanford.

While he was at Intel, he designed the
80486 processor, a product still revered at
the company.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (left) displays a plaque Intel CEO Pat Thus far, Intel watchers seem to love Gel-
Geisinger presented to him memorializing Ohio’s choice of Co-
lumbus, Ohio as a massive fab site. (Intel) singer. When observers learned that Swan
was out and Gelsinger was in, they ex-
Jim was right, of course. That is until a
stunning anti-trust lawsuit brought by a pected the returnee to shake up the leg-
little-known telecom wannabee MCT, over endary Northern California company, and
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